Israel-Palestine live: US and Israel air differences over Gaza strategy
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Israeli bombing has killed at least 700 people in the last 24 hours, the Gaza government media office has said.
Israeli fighter jets bombed heavily across Gaza's north and south on Saturday night and Sunday morning, levelling dozens of homes.
The escalation comes after US officials said they urged Israel to show "restraint" following the resumption of bombing on Friday.
Israel is seeking to "solidify the separation" between the occupied West Bank and Gaza in a bid to undermine a future Palestinian state, the Palestinian foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The statement, posted on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the killing of 38-year-old Ahmed Assi, who was shot by Israeli settlers on Saturday evening.
It called the killing a "a deliberate attempt to escalate the situation in the West Bank".
The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said Assi was left to bleed to death because settlers and Israeli forces did not allow medics to reach him.
Wafa said that the settlers were protected by Israeli forces during their rampage.
Adnan Issam Zaid, 21, was shot dead this morning by Israeli forces, Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
The killing took place during an Israeli raid in Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank.
Since 7 October, more than 250 people have been killed in the occupied West Bank, more than a quarter of them minors.
Seven Palestinians were killed and several others were injured in an Israeli raid on a house east of Rafah city in southern Gaza, the interior ministry said on Sunday.
Dozens of Palestinians were also killed early on Friday when Israel resumed air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip after a week-long truce ran out with no deal to extend it.
Israeli jets completely destroyed a residential building in Rafah city, southern #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/tq6S44Jhlp
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) December 3, 2023
Israel's war on Gaza has seen it strike the Palestinian enclave with new and deadly ferocity. That onslaught, according to a recent report, is being powered with an artificial intelligence system that experts warn is indiscriminate and inherently faulty.
During a collaborative investigation, Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call carried out interviews with various former and current Israeli intelligence officials, Middle East Eye reported.
These discussions uncovered that the military's expectations for minimising civilian targets were lower than what was previously assumed.
The combination of relaxed operational guidelines and the deployment of "Habsora" ("The Gospel" in Hebrew), an AI system capable of rapidly generating targets, led to what a former intelligence officer described as a "mass assassination factory".
According to the reports by officials, residences of lower-ranking members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups were deliberately targeted, even at the cost of potential casualties in the entire building.
The UK plans to deploy surveillance aircraft over Israel and Gaza to locate potential hostage sites utilised by Hamas, the Ministry of Defence announced on Saturday.
According to the statement, various unarmed planes, including the intelligence-gathering Shadow R1s, will be employed for the reconnaissance missions, the Guardian reported. The intelligence regarding the possible locations of hostages will be shared with Israel.
“The safety of British nationals is our utmost priority,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
“In support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity, the UK Ministry of Defence will conduct surveillance flights over the Eastern Mediterranean, including operating in airspace over Israel and Gaza."
It added that “surveillance aircraft will be unarmed, do not have a combat role, and will be tasked solely to locate hostages. Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue.”
Two military planes from Qatar landed in Egypt's El Arish on Saturday, bringing 62 tonnes of humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people in Gaza.
This took place ahead of the aid’s transportation to Gaza, the Qatari foreign ministry said in a post on X on Saturday.
The assistance, which included food and shelter materials, was supplied by the Qatar Fund For Development, the Qatar Red Crescent Society, and the Qatar Charity, as stated by the ministry.
The recent aircraft arrivals increase Qatar's total humanitarian flight count to 35, collectively delivering 1,192 tonnes of aid.
Students from a university in London are calling for the reinstatement of their classes, which were halted in response to actions supporting Palestine before and after the 7 October attack.
Last month, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) imposed suspensions on four current students and three former students. The university cited breaches of health and safety regulations during two demonstrations in support of Palestine, which took place on 29 September 29 and 9 October.
"We started chanting on the steps of the main building where protests have always happened," one of the students told MEE, requesting anonymity.
"In the last 18 months there has been a real escalation in the way security has responded [to student protests], so in this case, they shut all the doors of the building and security officers were filming us on their phones," the student said.
"Around 20 minutes in, the fire alarm went off. Because all the doors were shut, people were unsure of what was going to happen."
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin delivered his strongest remarks to date over Israel's need to protect civilians in Gaza on Saturday, calling them the centre of gravity in Israel's war with Hamas and warning over the risks of their radicalisation.
"In this kind of a fight, the centre of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Austin said, drawing on his experience as a four-star general overseeing the battle against Islamic State militants.
"So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and strategic imperative."
Israeli warplanes destroyed 50 residential buildings in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City on Saturday.
The raids have resulted in hundreds of deaths, according to the government press office in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip would continue "until we achieve all its aims", including returning all Israeli hostages and eliminating the Islamist movement.
In his first press conference since the expiry on Friday of a seven-day pause in the fighting with Hamas, he said: "Our soldiers prepared during the days of truce for total victory against Hamas."
US Vice President Kamala Harris said too many innocent Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as Israeli warplanes and artillery bombarded the enclave on Saturday following the collapse of a truce with Hamas militants.
Residents feared the barrages presaged an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pen them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them across into Egypt.
Speaking in Dubai, Harris said Israel had a right to defend itself, but international and humanitarian law must be respected and "too many innocent Palestinians have been killed".
"Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza, are devastating," Harris told reporters.
She also sketched out a US vision for post-conflict Gaza, saying the international community must support recovery and Palestinian security forces must be strengthened.
"We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the centre of this work," she said, adding that Hamas must no longer run Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society received 100 aid trucks at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the humanitarian organisation has said.
The trucks contained food, water, relief assistance, medical supplies and medicines, the PRCS said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the current conditions in Gaza “do not allow for a meaningful humanitarian response”.
In a statement released on Saturday, Pascal Hundt, the head of the ICRC’s Gaza operations, said:
"A very high number of civilians have been killed and maimed, including thousands of children. Homes, hospitals and other infrastructure critical to the survival of the civilian population have suffered colossal destruction…
"Current conditions do not allow for a meaningful humanitarian response and fear will spell disaster for the civilian population."
